Upgrading an Instance without a Partner and a Team of Two

[Xavier_Wharton]

Hello Community, 

I am new to this forum and thought it would be great to get feedback from other System Administrators, such as yourselves, about what should be considered when upgrading an instance (or multiple: DEV, TEST, and PROD). 

I know some of the product documentation and best practices, but I would also like to hear other considerations from professionals like you who have experience. 

Thank you in advance for your time and read the information below for more context. 

Context

Current Instance: UTAH

Upgrade to Vancouver
System Admin Team: Two (one part-timer)

Fears
- Breaking something or multiple things 😅
- Unknown-unknowns

Experience
- I have assisted in upgrading from San Diego to Utah when working with my partner.

[Sam Earl · Accepted solution]

Hi Xavier,

I am in a similar boat, where I am the only admin/developer looking after our ServiceNow instances. However, our upgrades generally go smoothly. A lot depends on your instances and what is being used on there. We only use ITSM and CSM, we're still not using workspaces, and we only have a single service portal to worry about. That helps to make it slightly easier to cover all the bases, but if you have a lot of modules or customisation in play it might be more difficult.

I have a suite of ATF tests which helps, it's definitely worth investing time in creating them to help with all updates. General run of things is:

• Clone back to Dev
• Run ATF tests, ensure tests pass
• Schedule upgrade to new version
• Check skipped records, stick to baseline as much as possible
• Run ATF tests again, ensure they still pass
• Manually perform any further checks/speak with our super users until we're confident the upgrade will be successful

I upgrade twice a year and for the past 3 years have yet to run in to a serious issue post upgrade. We occasionally get the odd disappearance of a button or new option that no one understands, but for the amount of resource spent on upgrades that's pretty successful. 😀

Best of luck!

[Sam Earl · Accepted solution]

Hi Xavier,

I am in a similar boat, where I am the only admin/developer looking after our ServiceNow instances. However, our upgrades generally go smoothly. A lot depends on your instances and what is being used on there. We only use ITSM and CSM, we're still not using workspaces, and we only have a single service portal to worry about. That helps to make it slightly easier to cover all the bases, but if you have a lot of modules or customisation in play it might be more difficult.

I have a suite of ATF tests which helps, it's definitely worth investing time in creating them to help with all updates. General run of things is:

• Clone back to Dev
• Run ATF tests, ensure tests pass
• Schedule upgrade to new version
• Check skipped records, stick to baseline as much as possible
• Run ATF tests again, ensure they still pass
• Manually perform any further checks/speak with our super users until we're confident the upgrade will be successful

I upgrade twice a year and for the past 3 years have yet to run in to a serious issue post upgrade. We occasionally get the odd disappearance of a button or new option that no one understands, but for the amount of resource spent on upgrades that's pretty successful. 😀

Best of luck!

[Xavier_Wharton]

This is really helpful Sam. Thank you. I'll definitely employ these strategies. 

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @Xavier_Wharton 

Greetings!!

Don't be afraid and panic. 

Before you do actual upgrade, you can do upgrade preview.

This will help you to get the time lines and conflicts.

Use SN standard Upgrade check list

Use ATF and a good trainning.

[Xavier_Wharton]

Thank you Atul, this is helpful. 

However, I need to become more familiar with ATF, and when I did look into it, I felt more confused than anything. I believe it's a valuable tool; I need help extracting the utility. 

Are there any knowledge resources you recommend for ATF and best practices?